


Closed Doors

by AetherAria



Series: Calamitous Intent [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Alternative Universe - All Games Canon, Canon as Mythology, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon, Reincarnation, spot the grim foreshadowing lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 02:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15985598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetherAria/pseuds/AetherAria
Summary: Ganondorf meets the people of Rhoam's kingdom, starting with his daughter.





	Closed Doors

**Author's Note:**

> Started playing BotW again, decided to post something else in this universe. Takes place many many years after Falling Out of Phase.

When the king introduced him to his daughter, Ganondorf felt his entire being lurch with a sensation that combined an unexpected plunge into freezing water and the urge to retch.

She was reading, some book far too thick for a child her age, laying on her stomach across the breadth of her father’s throne, with her bright cornsilk hair pushed back behind her ears and her feet kicking up in the air behind her. She didn’t notice them for a long moment, thankfully, and Gan managed to compose himself despite the hot and cold shivers competing to race across his skin.

This was little Zel, as Rhoam had been calling her, and Ganondorf knew like he knew the desert stars that this was Zelda. Of course it was. He was Ganondorf, and this was the child who balanced their three-pointed scale towards wisdom.

When she finally glanced up, her eyes slid past Ganondorf as if he were nothing (some part of him had been so convinced that she would recognize him too, would call him out, would have him dragged to the dungeons or thrown from the parapets, that he blinked in surprise), then landed on her father. She leapt from the throne in a heartbeat, crying out in obvious joy as she launched herself into Rhoam, who reeled back on his heels with a muffled laugh.

“Papa!” she said, voice full with relief, and, oddly, the first word that crossed Gan’s mind was _false_. Something about her tone, something about the way she held herself against the King, something about those eyes- he pushed the sensation away viciously. It was some holdover- some echoing hate from his former selves bleeding through, and that wasn’t fair to the child who was in front of him now, in _this_ life. She had been separated from her father for quite some time now- at least a year by Gan’s estimation. Maybe her feelings on the matter were complicated, a combination of missing him and resenting him for being gone in the first place, and that was all he was picking up on. Or perhaps he was wrong about it altogether. He politely looked aside for their reunion, politely failing to hear the quiet words they passed between them before Rhoam raised his voice again.

“Gan! Please, come meet my daughter.”

Gan obligingly stepped closer, smoothing his face into something earnest and kind, trying hard to actually feel those things. Focusing on Rhoam helped, somewhat. He bowed, more in the way of the Gerudo than that of Hyrule, and said. “Your father has told me many things about you, princess. I am Gan. You are called-” he opened his eyes and looked to the King, risking a wry sort of smile. “Zelda. It is Zelda, is it not?”

Rhoam laughed, the sound booming and warm in the cavernous space of the throne room. “Ah, you are too clever for my foolishness, my friend. Yes, she is my Zelda. Though- it wasn’t a lie, mind you. I call her Zel more often than not.”

“Princess Zelda,” he said, and the words burned his tongue coming out. He smiled, regardless. “An honor to meet you.”

She looked up, and then further up, at him, face dubious before it pulled into a smile. “You’re a Gerudo!”

“Yes,” he said, smiling in surprise.

“But you’re a boy, though.”

“Men are rarely born in my people, but it is not unheard of.”

“But what about-”

“That’s quite enough, Zelda,” Rhoam said, not unkindly, setting his large hand gently on the top of his daughter’s head. “We don’t want you to scare my new friend away before I can even begin my campaign to convince him to stay!”

A laugh slipped out under Gan’s breath in surprise, and the girl raised an eyebrow. “You’re the King. If you want him to stay, just _order_ him to stay,” she said, with an air of such patronizing obviousness that Gan almost broke into laughter a second time.

“That wouldn’t make me a very good friend, now, would it?” Rhoam said through a smile. “Besides, it just so happens that Gan here isn’t one of my subjects, anyway. The lands of the Gerudo aren’t under our rule, though we do trade and speak on very positive terms.”

“We don’t fight with _anyone_ ,” Zelda said, sounding both smug about it and a little bored. “Besides, it doesn’t matter if you’re _his_ king, you’re still _a_ king, so he should do what you say.”

“Ah,” Rhoam said, and turned with a chagrined expression to meet Gan’s incredulous one. “I suppose we need to have her tutors explain how my rule actually works, again. And,” he lifted his hand to scratch his beard with a look of consideration, “perhaps bring in someone to start her on philosophy… and ethics. Zel, I think you’re late to go get changed for supper, aren’t you dear?”

Zelda pouted, but curtsied anyway. “Yes papa,” she sighed, then she slipped out the door.

“Your book, darling-” Rhoam tried to call her back, but she was out of sight too quickly and he smiled again and picked the oversized tome off his throne and took his seat, setting the book down across his thighs. “A precocious one, she is.”

“Hm,” Gan agreed mildly. “What is that she was reading?”

“History,” Rhoam said, stroking his thumb over the gilding on the cover. “She’s quite fond of rediscovering the past.”

Gan carefully controlled his face. “Does that concern you?”

Rhoam looked up, expression perplexed.

“Oh. Forgive me. Is Zelda a more common name in central Hyrule? I thought there may have been some…” he hesitated, “intention to evoke the past, with her naming.”

“Not a common name, no,” Rhoam leaned back and rested his head in one hand. “You are refreshing to have around, Gan, do you know? No one else has asked me outright about that, yet. A princess called Zelda, as if I am begging for disaster. We are a land oversteeped in our own history, Gan, and it likes to bleed back through and reopen old wounds, when we least expect.” He sighed. “She is named Zelda because she _is_ Zelda. It- when she was born, we knew- we simply knew. There is so much old magic in this world, and on rare occasion…”

“Sometimes, it is more obvious than others,” Gan said quietly. He thought of his mothers, looking at him as an infant, choosing his name and acknowledging his fate to come. He had never considered that moment before. Never considered how early his parents suspected. Perhaps it had been right at the beginning-

“You really do understand me, Gan,” the king said, voice very soft, and Gan blinked himself out of his own thoughts.

“Ah, but you can’t justify keeping me around just for that, now, can you?”

“Why should I not?” he said, refusing to meet Gan’s playful, deflecting tone and keeping his voice concerningly earnest. “You have a perspective sorely missing in my court, and you have traveled far since you left your home, and you know more of my lands than I myself do. I have seen you fight rather more closely than is advisable, and it was impressive despite that, not only for your quite adept skills, but due to the _way_ you fight. You are sure of every motion, strategic and precise, even while the battle brings chaos around you, and even within that you advise others on the best course of action. You are a tactician and I believe you have _valuable_ contributions to make in my court, Gan.”

“And… _that_ is why you want to keep me around,” he said, an edge of disbelief seeping into his words.

“Yes.”

“That, and not your own preoccupation with our world and its reoccuring history?”

“What, my friend, are you asking me now?”

“You are no fool, Rhoam. I understand, if you wish to keep an eye on me.”

“Keep an eye on you?” he asked, though his tone was not particularly questioning.

“Rhoam. You are no fool, but neither am I.” Unspoken, please do not treat me as if I am.

The king sighed heavily, then lifted the book from his lap and tossed it to the floor with a boom. “Is your name Gan, my friend?”

“It is what my family most often calls me,” Gan said gently. “Quite like your Zel.”

“A name is only a name, Ganon.”

“Ganondorf,” he quickly corrected, stomach lurching though he kept his voice steady. “I have not lied to you, Rhoam.”

“Nor I you, my friend.”

That made Gan take pause. He had been thinking through routes of escape, doors and windows he had seen unguarded that he could use to remove himself from the castle if his friend decided that he was too dangerous to be left to his own devices, but his tone when he called Gan ‘friend’ had not shifted. It still sounded sincere.

He waited, and after a pause Rhoam stood. Gan kept himself from flinching, but it was a near thing.

“A name is only a name,” he repeated. “I cannot say if your parents felt as I felt when Zelda was born. Perhaps it is different. Perhaps it is the same, but it still changes nothing between the two of us.”

Gan folded his arms across his chest. “Does it not?” he asked, matching Rhoam’s even tone. “Is this not simply an attempt to keep your enemies in your sight?”

“I don’t believe you are my enemy, Gan.”

“But you do believe that I am the same creature that made an enemy of your daughter over countless centuries. Somehow at the same time.”

The king adjusted his sleeves and glanced up at Gan magnanimously. “How long would you say we traveled together, Ganondorf?”

Gan frowned, but allowed himself to be led by this line of questioning, trying not to let himself be distracted by how strange it felt for Rhoam to call him by his full name. “Quite some time.”

“How long?” he repeated.

“Long,” Gan said with a sigh. “We met on the coast after the storm, and it took weeks, perhaps, to find your retinue and your proper guards. And then somehow you convinced me to travel with you back here, all the long back way through the wilderness and around the volcano, stopping in every village and meeting with every shopkeep you could bully your advisers and guards and _me_ into. Months, in total, by my estimation.”

“Closer to a year, Gan.” Rhoam smiled. “Near a year I’ve eaten beside you, fought together with - or often been protected by - you, shared moments and memories and slept with my back to you on cold dirt and stone and sand. You have been unerringly noble and fierce and honest whenever I have seen you act or speak. And even if I had misjudged you so, so utterly, we are now in the most private room I can muster, just you and I again as it was when we first met, and if you wanted me dead, Gan, I believe I would be. If you were waiting to meet my daughter to end her life, you had your opportunity, and you did not bite.” He chuckled lightly. “Frankly, you looked as uncomfortable as a Zora on Death Mountain staring down my precious but too-sharp little jewel.”

Gan kept his arms carefully folded over his chest and considered all of that.

The odd thing was, Gan hadn’t even considered for a moment how all of his actions would be perceived by Rhoam, of all people. He had wanted Rhoam to like him as a person, of course, but all of his actions - saving a stranger on a strange beach, not knowing he was king, protecting others simply because he had the ability, actively rejecting cruelty and deception - all of it had been to prove something to himself. To prove himself more than his potential for evil.

Without intending to, he had managed to prove something to someone else, instead.

“I… don’t know what to say, Rhoam.”

The king visibly relaxed, the tension in his shoulders dissolving. “Say that you will stay. Please.” His face split into a more mischievous grin. “I’ve gotten too used to you and your candor, my friend. I simply cannot go back to sycophants and simperers, and I need your wit on my side in this castle.”

“You want me to embarrass your more annoying courtiers?” Gan asked with a raised brow and an exaggerated air of disdain. “That seems a misuse of my skills.”

“I want your mind working to better this land, and the lands around us.” Rhoam’s voice had swung back around to earnest, and Gan was yet again left off balance. “Your ideas are- I’ve already spoken to the captain of my guard about your suggestion to increase patrols on the trade routes to protect travelers from monsters and thieves. I am mortified that no one here thought of it. None of us could see past our noses to a problem right down there!” He pointed out the window, towards the valley of bustling life below. “I should know better than to allow the rulers here to only think of themselves. I need your perspective.”

“You have said that many times now,” Gan said, feeling overwhelmed.

“I say it because I mean it.”

“I have not seen terribly many folks who are not Hylian among your upper retinue,” Gan said mildly. “Will it not be an issue that I am a Gerudo? That I am not, in truth, a citizen of your kingdom?”

“Technicalities,” Rhoam waved the words away as if they were irritating flies. “More ambassadors are always welcome, always valued in my court.”

Gan thought for a long moment, meeting Rhoam’s eyes and trying not to let the spark of mischief in his expression provoke his own smile. “I will-”

“Thank you, my friend, you will not regret-”

“I will _consider_ it,” Gan continued stubbornly. “I will stay and meet those you have told me about, at least. Your stories have intrigued me, and there are some in your court I would dearly like to meet.”

“And some you would like to pour a drink down the front of, I’m sure.”

Gan tilted his head and pursed his lips in a way that was not even close to a denial. “I would like to know this place as well. I cannot give my word that I will stay, though.”

Rhoam grinned. “You refused to give your word that you would accompany me the whole way back to the castle, as well, but here we still are, yes?”

Gan’s stoic mask faltered, and he chuckled under his breath. “You have the gift of persuasion, your highness.”

“So I have been told.”

“I trust I will be allowed my freedom to come and go as I choose,” Gan said, and Rhoam looked appropriately horrified at the implication that he wouldn’t be.

“I want to be clear. You are my friend, and I intend for you to be an adviser and ambassador, but these are not chains I wish to put on you. I know you have family you intended to visit soon before you found my bedraggled self on the beach. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am-” he fluttered a hand dismissively, “a king, by whatever rights, but I would never use my power to do something so wretched as keep you here against your will. Know that you will never be a prisoner in my home.”

“Of course not,” Gan said, startled by how seriously Rhoam had taken his small attempt at assurances. “I did not intend to imply anything of the sort.”

Rhoam paused, then awkwardly flattened down his beard. “Right. Right.” He coughed. “I simply know what sort of… unintended influence my position can have. It’s easy for the people around me to… misunderstand my suggestions and desires as commands.”

Gan’s expression shifted to bemused. “Perhaps it _will_ be good for you to have me around for a while longer, your highness.”

Rhoam smiled, relieved. “I imagine it will.”


End file.
